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"With the Past Let These Be Buried":The z873 Mob Massacre of the Hill Familyin Springtown, TexasHELEN MCLURE*IN LATE AUGUST OF 1873, DEEP INTO THE FIERCE DOG DAYS OF A TEXAS SUM-mer, smoke from a burning homestead stained the bleached blue sky.The terrified inhabitants fled ahead of their pursuers, but forty-seven-year-old widow Laduska ("Dusky") Hill and two of her daughters, Ade-line, seventeen, and Eliza, sixteen, were cornered a short distance fromtheir charred home. According to an affidavit made in 1919, the womenwere "taken to a point near the present site of Agnes in Parker County,Texas, where they were shot and killed" and the broken bodies aban-doned where they fell. The corpses of three other daughters-Nancy,twenty-five, Martha, twenty, and Kate, nineteen-dangled from trees inother parts of the surrounding area. As the father and oldest son hadboth been killed during the preceding decade, the entire Hill family wasthus destroyed except the two youngest children, Allen Hill Jr., thirteen,and twelve-year-old Belle.'Even at this relatively late date, Parker County was still occasionally thetarget of brief, bloody Comanche raids, but Indians were innocent ofthese violent deaths. Instead, over the course of several days, in what maybe one of the most bizarre and mysterious episodes of vigilante violencein American history, six rural white women and girls were hanged or shotto death by their own neighbors. The killing mob was allegedly composedof "the better element of the community, many of whom were and have* Helen McLure is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Arlhngton. The author isindebted to the work and generosity of genealogists Gene David Laughlin and Linda MaupinNoel and Springtown historian Laurie Moseley III. She also thanks David E. Narrett and RichardV. Francavigha.'Fort Worth Democrat, Sept. 6, 1873; Affidavit, G. W. Tackett and A. L. Thomas, Nov. 1, 1919(quotation), Deed Records, Parker County, vol. 116, p. 97 (Parker County Courthouse Annex,Weatherford, Tex.); United States Eighth Census (186o), Family No. 146, and United StatesTenth Census (188o), Family No. 225, Parker County, Texas (microfilm; Dallas Pubhec Library).